This past Spring Break proved to be an educational and influential adventure for the eight Eastern students who participated in the Alternative Spring Break: Generous Gardens Project in Greenville, South Carolina. The Generous Gardens Project is a nonprofit organization that grows, harvests, and delivers fresh food, as a healthy alternative to canned and boxed food, to people who are in need. They also educate individuals on how to create and maintain fresh produce gardens in a sustainable way. South Carolina is ranked ninth in the highest population of hungry people in the United States. Hunger is a very real and significant issue in our world today and the Generous Garden Project works to end the struggle of hunger in the healthiest way possible. "It is a known fact that if people get fresh fruits and veggies in their diet, they think more clearly, have more energy and live more fruitful lives. We are here to fight hunger one garden at a time."
The students drove 11 hours down to Trinity Church in Travelers Rest, South Carolina where they resided for the week. Everyday from 8am until about 3:30pm the volunteers worked hard planting seeds, making compostable flower pots, making garden beds and laying down leaves, feeding chickens and gather their eggs, sifting through compost, making labels for plants, and harvesting lettuce. Students learned the ins and outs of gardening and volunteering at a community based garden. The volunteers were able to incorporate the fresh produce from the gardens into their daily meals, which was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the trip for most of the volunteers. This spring break, however, was not all work and no play, one day was spent exploring the city of Greenville, hiking through Paris Mountain and dining at a local Hibachi.
Student Leader Lily Egan commented on her experience at the Generous Gardens Project: "I would never have imagined doing anything else during this spring break. It was truly an honor to be able to work with such open-minded and hard working people. On thing I learned through working at the Generous Gardens Project was that in order to grow you must learn, and in order to learn you must be willing to grow, just like in college and just like a plant."
Did you know that there is more than enough food on earth to sufficiently feed every single person? Despite this, there are still millions of people who go hungry every day. At the Center for Community Engagment, one of our missions is to reduce the number of people who are going hungry in our community. One of the ways that we are doing this is through "gleanings."
Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmer's fields that would otherwise be left in the fields to rot or be plowed under after harvest. Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of a welfare system.
Gleanings allow us to go to local farms and take the crops that the farmers know they will not sell. Our first gleaning was at Oak Haven Farm right down the road in Scotland, CT. We got to go apple picking and collected over 200 pounds of apples and donated them to our local Salvation Army and Catholic Charities right down the road. It was a great opportunity to save fruit that otherwise would have been wasted! Not to mention, fresh vegetables and fruits are not always readily available to those in poverty.
Special thanks to Oak Haven Farm for letting us come down and pick apples, they even let us pick more than we originally anticipated! And a big thank you to our volunteers, Nicole and Israel!
